UFT director of legislation and political action Paul Egan, accused of creating a restaurant ruckus.

Hardly could there be a more revealing snapshot of the means, methods and mind-set of the United Federation of Teachers than was offered up at an Albany restaurant by the union's political and legislative director. Delicious, simply delicious.

By throwing a bullying tantrum over supposedly poor service and unsatisfactory fare - a raging snit fit that required police intervention - Paul Egan highlighted for the public:

1)How the UFT swarms Albany with lobbyists to get its way.

2)How UFT leaders live high on the hog as thousands of their members face layoffs.

3)How the UFT not only defends teachers found to have committed wrongdoing, but is happy to have one, Egan, in its top ranks.

Egan is a former junior high school teacher. In 1999, according to a report by the special schools investigator, he "used several different methods to cheat" while proctoring a standardized math exam so as to help students boost their scores.

"First he purposely displayed the answers to the first 11 questions by leaving them unguarded on his desk for the students to find," the report concluded, adding that Egan also gave children hints to answers and tipped kids off when he saw they had made an incorrect choice.

"Mr. Egan gave me the answers to some of the questions," one boy told a girl sitting nearby before writing the correct answers on a sheet of scrap paper for her.

Today, Egan is the UFT's chief lobbyist in the Legislature, a body that has steadfastly refused to reform a teacher disciplinary process that makes it all but impossible for school administrators to fire an instructor for cause.

Small wonder, huh?

On Monday, Egan led a delegation of 24 - count them, 24 - union reps on an Albany lobbying blitz. Then the big guy treated his troops to dinner at Marché, a restaurant in a boutique hotel near the Capitol.

This was no Applebee's. No, it was expense-account heaven with a $40 prix fixe menu. Egan had the quail. Of course he did. But then he didn't like the quail. He thought the quail a disappointingly small bird, apparently having missed the part of the curriculum where one might learn that quail is, well, a small bird.

He went ballistic and, according to reports, refused to pay, eventually getting a break on the tab before cops herded out the role models for the young.

Yesterday, embarrassed by appearing ill-mannered when the Daily News' Ken Lovett brought Egan's ill manners to light, he wrote to the restaurant: "A number of untoward incidents occurred, including half the party not getting served for an hour and a half, late and rude service, drinks hot and cold spilled by waiters and cold and uncooked meals."

Let's leave aside that Egan should have passed that sentence by an English teacher, and let's assume that everything happened just as he described. A sorry fact still remains: Egan got himself run out of a restaurant by the police, thereby calling attention to his own professional history and to the qualities that Mulgrew looks for, or at least accepts, in his top aides.

So Egan is a dunce of high order. But we value him nonetheless because, in his knuckleheadedness, he has taught New Yorkers big lessons about the Mulgrew-era UFT.